The present invention relates to improved means for severing paper such as printed receipts.
The invention is particularly useful for automated self-service fueling pumps in which a customer's credit or debit card is automatically read and the fueling pump generates a receipt for the customer. It may also be used in any suitable circumstance in which lengths of paper are to be projected from a supply and intermittently severed from the supply. The receipt is printed on paper which is supplied in the form of a roll. The paper roll is rotated by the driving of the paper through the printer, which has a pinch roller. The paper continues past the printer to the exit chute, from which the customer can easily grasp and take away his receipt. Some of the problems faced in the design of this equipment include the exposure of the mechanism to harsh environmental circumstances since the fueling pump is usually located outdoors and the exposure to vandalism, which such a location risks. It is known to provide an active cutter, such as a scissors or a rotary cutter to traverse the paper and thereby sever it, but the provision of driving force for the active cutter to cause the traversal of the paper make for a complicated and expensive construction.
To avoid this, there have been prior art mechanisms which generate the receipt from pre-cut paper, but these have their own complications due to the need to feed individual sheets and also have the drawback of preventing various sizes of sheets from being used. Another aspect of the outside location of the receipt dispensing chute is the exposure of the receipt to the elements before the customer takes it. As can be appreciated, if the customer decides not to take his receipt, wind and rain could turn the receipt into undesirable waste paper.
It is desirable from an aesthetic and customer relations point of view that the receipt be out cleanly to present a neat appearance to the customer.
It is known to sever receipts with a knife in which the paper is deflected away from the knife as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,579,267 to Planke, but it is not believed that such apparatus is capable of providing as clean a out as desired or to reliably feed past the knife.
It is also known to provide retractable means as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,991,923 to Nishikawa to shield a blade for purposes of preventing inadvertent cuts of hands and the like. However, the provision of a convenient tear bar for receipt cutting for use in fueling dispensers and the like, providing a clean, straight-across and easy-to-implement cut, while increasing the reliability by using no moving parts, is a need that is as-of-yet unfulfilled.